Woman Walks into a Bar Read online

  When Adam left I had to pick myself up and get on with things. I had to look after myself and my daughter. I had to do it for myself to prove that I could be strong. And sometimes it’s hard, but I want to do it by myself, and whenever I look around at everything we’ve got, I know that it’s almost all because of me and I’m really proud.

  Four

  “Don’t get me moved off fresh fish,” I said to Marie. “I’m not going to meet this bloke, remember?”

  Marie sighed and picked up her clipboard.

  “Oh, come on, Sam,” she pleaded. “You’re never going to believe who it is!”

  I blinked at her. That meant I knew whoever it was they were trying to set me up with.

  “Marie!” Joy scowled at her. “We’re not telling her who it is, all right?”

  “I haven’t told her who it is! All I’ve said is—”

  “What, I know this person?” I said, looking at Joy.

  “Yeah,” Joy said, looking a bit awkward.

  “I know him and he’s not one of your castoffs?”

  Joy nodded.

  I looked at Marie. “Who is he?” I asked.

  “I’m not telling,” Marie said, “but when you see him, you’ll be well glad you went, I promise you . . .”

  A list of all the people I thought it might be flashed through my head in a split second.

  “Brian?” I asked.

  “No,” Joy replied.

  “Mick, Dave, Jules, Ali . . .?”

  Joy and Maria shook their heads on each name and I was glad. I didn’t want it to be any of those names. But if it wasn’t any of them and it was someone that I knew, who did that leave?

  I thought of a name but I didn’t say it out loud.

  There was one person who I’d like to see sitting at the table waiting to buy me a drink at seven that night. But it couldn’t be that person for two reasons. Firstly, neither Joy nor Marie nor anyone on earth except me knew that I liked him. And secondly, he was the bar manager at the White Horse. He’d be there to see me meeting up with whoever this geek was because he was bound to be working on a Friday night. Wasn’t he?

  I hadn’t started out fancying Brendan. It wasn’t like the first time I saw him I couldn’t speak and my heart was racing and I knew I was in love. He didn’t blow me away exactly. In fact, I thought he was a bit too short for me and he was very quiet at first, shy. Marie was the first to notice he had nice eyes, and Joy liked his Irish accent.

  He’d been working at the White Horse for a few months before I realized that the person I most looked forward to seeing on a Friday night was not Joy or Marie. It was him. I’d been getting ready to meet the girls as usual when I realized my belly felt funny. Sort of twisted. I thought it might have been the chicken tikka sandwich I had had for lunch so I went and sat on the loo, but nothing happened. It reminded me of something I had felt before, and I remembered the first time I had felt Beth moving inside me, fluttering against my insides like a bird beating its wings. But I couldn’t be pregnant.

  And then I laughed out loud sitting on the loo. It had been so long since I had had that feeling I’d forgotten it altogether. It was butterflies! It was the thought of seeing Brendan that night that was making me feel excited. I’d probably fancied him for ages before that night. It just took me a long time to realize it. I had thought that those sorts of feelings inside me had gone forever. I thought they had been kicked to death.

  But I didn’t tell anyone. Because if Joy found out, the world would have known by teatime. And because Brendan wasn’t going to fancy someone like me, not when he had skinny twenty-year-olds throwing themselves at him every night of the week. And because while nobody knew, and it was just my secret, I could hold it close inside and enjoy it and pretend that it might be real one day.

  I looked at Joy, then another thought of who it might be swept over me, and I found myself shaking. I must have gone white because Joy reached out an arm to steady me and took a step closer.

  “Babe,” she said gently. “What?”

  I made myself ask.

  “It’s not . . . it’s not him, is it?” I asked in a whisper. The laughter in Joy’s face was gone in an instant.

  “Sam, no! No. I would never, never do that, you know that,” Joy told me firmly.

  “I know you wouldn’t mean to,” I said. “But you know what he’s like. I thought if he wanted to see me he’d try and talk you round and maybe . . . maybe . . . maybe.” My words had got stuck, like a scratch on a CD. Only talking about Adam did that to me. I don’t know what would happen if I actually saw him.

  “Listen to me,” Joy said, putting her other hand on my shoulder. “It’s not him. He doesn’t even live round here anymore. And he’d never come back here. He knows what would happen to him if he did. It’s not him, OK?” I nodded and Joy bit her lip as she looked at me.

  “I hate it when you’re like this, Sam,” she said. “When are you going to realize no one can hurt you now? You are a strong, independent woman, all right? And anyway I’m here, your mum and dad, Eddie . . .”

  “And me,” Marie said, feeling left out.

  “For what’s it’s worth,” Joy said, winking at me, “he’s gone. He’s been gone for years. He’s never coming back. It’s not him. You have to stop letting him frighten you.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath. I felt in my other pocket and found my inhaler and took two puffs. Deep breath, count to ten. Deep breath, count to ten.

  “Do you need to go to the medical room?” Sandra snapped too loudly in my ear.

  “No, Sandra,” I said. “Just a bit wheezy . . .”

  “Well, stop standing around gossiping and get on with it then, all right? This is not a holiday camp!” We watched her arse wobble as she marched off toward canned goods.

  “Look, just be there tonight, OK?” Joy said. “You’ll be glad that you did.” She was smiling again.

  I thought for a moment. If it wasn’t any of the people I didn’t want it to be, then there was a chance, a small chance, that it might be Brendan.

  Beth’s always telling me that if I start thinking good things will happen to me, then they will. She says, “There’s no point in moaning about not winning the lottery, Mum, when you don’t ever buy a ticket. You can’t expect the right bloke just to turn up right under your nose. You have to go out and find him. You have to take chances.”

  It probably wouldn’t be Brendan that I was going to meet as my blind date in the bar tonight. But there was a chance it might be. A chance worth taking.

  “All right,” I said, finding myself smiling as the butterflies kicked off in my guts again. “Why not?”

  “Hooray!” Marie cheered quietly, as she slotted her pen into the top of her clipboard. “And at least he’s got to be better than that twat you met at Roxy’s,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked. “Why?”

  “He’s not married,” she said.

  The One Who Was No Good for Any Woman Including His Wife

  I walked into the bar.

  I hadn’t been to Roxy’s in years. And now I remembered why. The thump of the music made my ears ring and the flash of the lights made me squint. I don’t know why this Graham had picked a nightclub on a Thursday night for us to meet. It was only just eight and the place was more or less empty. The air-conditioning made me get goose bumps on my arms and the dry ice made me cough. I unfolded the email that Beth had printed out for me with instructions on where we were to meet.

  “Upstairs in the booths,” it read. I looked at his photo. Even in the pulsing strobe lights he was pretty good looking. Beth had written out a joke underneath the photo.

  What does Dracula say to his victims?

  It’s been nice gnawing you!

  I smiled. The joke wasn’t funny. But Beth going to the trouble to do something to make me smile when I was fe
eling nervous made me happy. Sometimes I wondered how, despite every­thing, I had ended up with such a great kid.

  When I walked up the stairs, the noise of the music went down a little bit. All of the booths seemed to be empty, but I walked along the row from one to another until I found him, sitting in the corner. He had been watching himself in the mirrored wall and turned round when he saw my reflection.

  “There you are,” he said. I wondered if he was talking to me or my chest.

  “Here I am,” I said, feeling nervous. “Ha ha.”

  He patted the seat next to him for me to sit down. I did. He pushed a drink toward me across the table. It was tall with lots of ice in it, a curly straw and an umbrella stuck in the top.

  “I got you a cocktail,” he said. “Sex on the Beach.” He looked pretty pleased with himself so I took a sip. It tasted of Ribena.

  “Cheers,” I said.

  He looked at my chest again, and I began to wish that I hadn’t let Beth talk me into buying a new top.

  “You can’t wear that old-lady stuff to a nightclub, Mum,” she’d said in Topshop. “How about this one? It’s on sale.”

  I hadn’t liked it because it was too tight and you could see the little lumps of fat that bulged out under my bra. But Beth said it was “way cool,” so I bought it.

  “Tell me about yourself, Sam,” Graham said. I didn’t know what to say. No one had said that to me in years. Or maybe even ever.

  “Not much to tell,” I said, sucking the cocktail through the curly straw. “I’ve got a daughter called Beth who’s twelve. I work at the local supermarket—that’s it really. Just what it says on my thingy. Profile.”

  Graham leant a bit closer to me. He smelt of strong aftershave.

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said very quietly, so quietly that I had to lean closer to him to hear him above the music. “Tell me what makes you tick.”

  It was funny, really, because the more of the cocktail I drank, the more I had to say. I ended up telling him a lot about myself. The words just seemed to tumble out. Once I got started I couldn’t shut up. I didn’t tell him everything, thank God. Just about what life was like for me and Beth on our own. By the end of the cocktail I found myself telling him I was lonely.

  “A beautiful woman like you,” he said, “is bound to have needs a man like me could take care of.”

  “Needs?” I said, remembering that I needed to pay the gas bill as the red one had come that morning.

  “Needs,” he said. And he kissed me. I was a bit taken aback at first. It took my brain a few seconds to work out what my body was doing, and by that time my body was well up for it.

  I was kissing him back. His hand was up my top, squeezing and groping, and my hand was on his thigh. His mouth was all over mine and, as we kissed, the edges of the booth seemed to blur and spin. I remember looking at my watch and being surprised that it was not even nine yet. After a bit, he broke off the kiss and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “Shall we go back to your place?” he said.

  “My place?” I said, thinking about my mum and Beth.

  “Yeah,” he said. He reached out his left hand and traced a finger down the deep V of my top. Not just any finger. His ring finger. With a faint white band of skin around it. Skin that wouldn’t have caught the sun like the rest of him because it was usually protected by a ring. I looked at the mark until I realized what it meant.

  “You’re married,” I said, not angry, just surprised. Graham looked at the finger too, then, and snatched it back. I think he swore under his breath, angry that I’d noticed it.

  “Um, no . . .” he said. “Well, not really. I mean, in name only. We’re getting divorced in a few months . . . so come on, what do you say? What we’ve got is special, isn’t it?”

  I looked at him and thought about how he had made me feel with his hand up my top and his mouth everywhere. For a moment I thought that I had wanted him, but now I just felt cheap, cut-price just like my bargain-bin top.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t go out with married men.” And I stood up.

  “You slapper,” he said.

  “What did you say?” I asked him. Normally I would have pretended I hadn’t heard him, anything to avoid trouble. But I think the cocktail made me feel brave.

  “I said, you fucking slapper.” He spat the words out loud enough to be clear over the music. “I know your type. Grown-up kid at your age. You’ve been shagging since you were a kid, handing it out to anyone. Don’t tell me that a slapper like you won’t go with me because I’m married. What is it? Do you want paying?”

  I wanted to answer back, to stand up for myself and make him take back everything he’d just said, but I couldn’t do any of those things. Not even the drink made me that brave. I’d been there before, standing in front of people with their faces full of hate, shouting insults at me. I knew there was only one thing I could do. So I just walked away as quickly as I could, pulling my coat across my chest as I walked out of the club.

  As I was leaving, a bouncer nodded at me.

  “Good for you, love,” he said. “Lucky escape. He’s got a different poor cow in here every week.”

  When I got in I told Beth he wasn’t for me, and she just shrugged and smiled and made me a hot chocolate.

  “Never mind, Mum,” she said. “Let’s log on now and see if you’ve got any messages.” I didn’t have the heart to say no, but I cried for a long time before I went to sleep that night. And the next day at work I made it into one big joke, until Joy and Marie were laughing so much they were crying, and thinking about it didn’t hurt anymore.

  Five

  Deodorant

  Razors

  Nail varnish remover

  Nail varnish

  Condoms!!!

  I stood by the condom counter and glanced about to see if anyone was looking at me. I hadn’t bought any condoms in years. I have never actually used one. There have been only two blokes. Luke Goddard, a boy I used to like from school, and that was only the once, and Adam, Beth’s so-called dad. Adam didn’t like using condoms, so I went on the pill. It’s funny. I kept taking it for nearly two years after we split up. I don’t know why; routine, I suppose.

  And I don’t know why I wrote condoms on my shopping list except Beth had been on me to get some.

  “You need to practice safe sex, Mum,” she’d told me. “It’s not just about getting pregnant, you know, there’s all sorts of nasty diseases around too.” We were in the kitchen at the time. She was washing up and I was peeling potatoes. I nearly took the top of my finger off.

  “How do you know about condoms?” I’d said, whirling round and pointing the peeler at her.

  “What do you mean, how do I know?” she’d said, without looking up from the dishes. “I learnt about them at school. Sex education, Mum? Duh!”

  I’d stopped and tried to find the right words to say. It felt like I had been waiting for her to be this age since she was born. Waiting and worrying that, as soon as she stopped playing with her Barbie and started thinking about boys, she’d go and throw everything she had away on some boy who wouldn’t give a toss about her afterwards. Beth was different from me. When I fell pregnant, I didn’t have anything apart from my baby. I didn’t have any exams. I’d left school before I could take them. I didn’t have any boy­friend. I didn’t have any future, not like her. She could do anything with her life. Maybe even go to college if I save enough money every month.

  “Beth,” I’d said. She’d looked up from the washing up. “I love you. You’re the best thing in my life. You always will be.”

  “I know,” she’d said and blew a soapsud at me.

  “But I don’t want you to think that just because . . . just because I had you on my own when I was quite young that it’s easy—”

  “Mu-um!” Beth had proteste
d. “Honestly! No way would I ever get pregnant! What, do you think because I know about condoms I’ll get pregnant or have sex? It’s when you don’t know about condoms you get pregnant! If anyone should know that, it’s you.” Beth wrinkled her nose. “Yuck! No way am I having sex, not for ages and ages. And anyway, even if I did, I wouldn’t do it without a condom.”

  “But boys can put pressure on you . . .” I’d started.

  “Boys are stupid, so I’m not exactly going to listen to them, am I?” Beth had said across me. “And I don’t want you to get pregnant either. So if you want to have sex when you get a boyfriend, you’d better get some condoms, OK?”

  “OK,” I’d said. And then I’d decided to mash the potatoes instead of fry them.

  I looked at the rest of the items I already had in my basket and decided to leave the condoms. I don’t know what I was thinking even writing them on my list. What Beth didn’t know was that I sometimes wondered if I’d ever have sex with any man again. Sometimes at night just as I’m drifting off to sleep I think of what it might be like with Brendan. But that’s just dreaming, and anyway it probably wouldn’t be Brendan waiting for me in the White Horse. So I left the condoms behind and went to the Ten Items or Less queue with my discount card.

  “I hear you’re hoping to get lucky, Sam?” Cathy, the girl behind the till, asked me with a wink. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  I looked at my shopping and frowned.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Fish fingers.”

  Six

  Beth left me a joke on the front door of the flat scrawled in pink ink on a Post-it note she’d stuck down with extra tape to stop it blowing away.

  “Knock knock . . .”

  “Who’s there?”

  “Alison!”

  “Alison who?”

  “Alison to my teacher!!”

  I read the joke twice when I got inside but I still didn’t get it.